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Waiheke needs affordable housing now

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The pundits and the politicians are talking about affordable housing.

However, common sense seems to be absent from the conversation

If you want housing to be affordable, either the taxpayer has to subsidise it, or:

1. Make the land per unit cost less

2. Lower the cost of construction

3. Lower the cost of the paperwork.

The Council has the power to do No 1 & 3.

Social Enterprise can do No 1 & 2

Together, they can build affordable housing

The challenge is to bring the Council to the party.

When a place is as desirable as Waiheke,

development will happen

"No" is not an option. Either you must

REACT

React on the back foot, fighting inappropriate development

or

LEAD

Shift to the front foot, and as a community, take control.

What do we love about our island?

The Water

The Land

The Spirit

What threatens the island we love?

Centralised Decision Making

Exploitative Development

Unaffordable Housing

Back Foot takes too much work

Courts, fundraising, endless motions, shocking legal & expert bills.

How to we make that shift?

How do we know where to start?

Enter into the conversation

What's the problem? What is either not working, or could work better?

Rather than say "they should", shift to "we can" and then see what comes of it.

By shifting to the front foot, we begin to enable people and communities to provide for their economic, social, cultural & environmental well being while protecting the environment.

Sound familiar?

It's the purpose statement of the Resource Management Act.

OK, good idea. How do we begin?

While governments tend to love statistics and politicians/press anecdotes, if you are serious about enabling people and communities, you need to ask real people, your people and your community, to stand up and be counted.

For example, we are told there is a need for affordable housing.

In response, government will fund studies. The press will feature someone living in a car.

Neither puts a roof over anyone's head.

But if several hundred people say they need affordable housing, and each person is specific about how much they can pay each week (rent or mortgage), and what type of housing they need, then we not only have real data, but can align those individual needs to create purchasing power.

As an individual you are the mercy of the market.

But when hundreds of people add up their individual buying power, together

they become the market; they make it.

The talent exists on Waiheke to come up with great ideas.

The resources exist to put them into action.

The time for talk is laid down.

Time for action.

SHIFT TO THE FRONT FOOT

Revive some of the dormant community organisations...

community charitable trusts, incorporated societies, etc.

Raise money for experts and lawyers to help the community lead. Run social enterprises to do something positive.

The community knows how to raise money, it does so when on the back foot. But that is only to stop bad stuff.

Continue the money raising, but instead do so for proactive purposes that lead rather than react.

In an ideal world, this is the purpose of local government: We vote to tax ourselves to fund local needs & aspirations.

But unfortunately, there is no local government in Auckland. The supercity is a defacto state government, which creates a vacuum.

With the funding, formulate a framework, not a plan.

A framework defines the boundary conditions - what we want to achieve.

Then the community goes through a process to shape that framework into a plan that it then implements.